…As the iPad has matured, so too have customer expectations. In recent years, Apple’s happily positioned the product as a kind of laptop alternative for business and education. The push has been accelerated with the arrival of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, which has made it a more compelling offering for creative pros, along with additional features to help facilitate multitasking.
The arrival of iPadOS marks the next key step in the tablet’s evolution.
Multitasking… is the real centerpiece of the update. Slide Over, which offers a a second floating app window gets some key improvements, including the ability to have several different apps open in the mode at once by dragging them from the dock. Swiping up to the middle of the screen will display all of the apps open in slide over like a deck of cards. Swipe all the way up and the app will go full screen.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s all excellent, except for the text selection issue. If you don’t select text often, you’re pretty much good to go on an iPad with iOS 13 for most of the average user’s “personal computing” tasks.
But text selection on iPad (and iPhone) remains a stumbling block and is the main reason why we still reach for our MacBooks instead of our iPads when working on-the-go.
After waiting years for the iPad to eclipse the MacBookPro as my main toolbox, I have begun to wonder why. I mean, as a writer (who does not travel) why wouldn’t I continue to want a Mac as my toolbox? Even if the iPad one day becomes as good as the Mac, why would I switch?
The real question (nobody seems to be asking) is, “Do you really need to replace your Mac?”
Use the device that most suits you, and your way of working. Personally I always by choice reach for my iPad Pro as that is what does it for me (I feel more connected) – but I know it is not for everyone and I do not try to force others to use. Nice we have a choice and everyone can use what they prefer.
IPad is an utter waste of money. Get a Mac and be done with it. Apple over charges for an iPad period!
The Macbook line is poor value when it comes to storage and RAM. $200 to bump 8GB to 16GB RAM, another $200 to bump 128GB to 256GB SSD.
128 GB isn’t enough for anything the Mac is actually best suited for, like photos, video, music. iCloud storage is a pipe dream for those with slower connections, or those with monthly data limits.
I can’t see me getting rid of my desktop Mac in the foreseeable future, but iPad has made my MacBook pretty well redundant for my purposes. The extreme portability of an iPad together with it’s continual refinement is making it the only device I need when I’m away from home ( apart from my iPhone of course ). The number of tasks which I use my MacBook for has rapidly reduced and it wouldn’t make sense for me to buy a replacement MacBook once my current MacBook reaches the end of it’s useful life.
Furthermore, when away from home, being able to recharge it from my existing IOS chargers, car adaptors and external batteries means that I have flexible options for different situations and don’t need to carry specific chargers and adaptors because I already have them with me for my iPhone. iPad is also cheap compared to a MacBook and I now have two which means that I have an immediate replacement in case of theft, loss or catastrophic failure.
I have never owned a Wintel PC and have no need of Intel compatibility, so an ARM Apple laptop might well be of interest to me. When iPad OS was announced, my initial thought was that it might be the OS for a future ARM laptop, but with iPad gaining enhanced functionality, an ARM laptop would no longer be the automatic purchase that it might have been a couple of years ago, any purchasing decision would now depend on a number of other factors.